I saw “The Phantom Menace” on Friday night, in 3D (the 3D looks good, by the way, one or two bad moments excepted), the first time in thirteen years. Oh yes, like many of you, I was there on opening night, and like a lot of you, I walked away disappointed. More than ten years later, I walked out disappointed again, but for entirely different reasons.

I could rip the script, the editing, the filmmaking, but everybody’s done that. Underneath all of that is one simple decision that quite frankly says far too much, intentionally or unintentionally, about George Lucas, and probably stuck in your craw without your even realizing it.

First, let’s look at Star Wars. The rebels, the guys fighting a presumably oppressive and restrictive regime, are in the right. Sure, they screw up. Before I worked here, I wrote an entire article for Cracked about how they screwed up. But knocking over the Empire is in no way a bad thing.

Now look at Qui-Gon. He’s the unconventional guy in the script, the hippie, the one who takes risks, thinks with his heart. He stands up and tells off the obstinately bureaucratic and oppressive Man…and he’s wrong. So, so incredibly f**king wrong he triggers the fall of the Republic, killing untold millions and putting everyone else firmly under the boot of a guy so evil, his chosen name is Sidious.

Stop and think about the implications of that for a minute. To the extent the original trilogy of Star Wars has a message (and that’s debatable), that message is “it’s OK to rebel against oppression, and the people in authority don’t necessarily know better than you.”

The message of “The Phantom Menace”, embodied in Quin-Gon Jinn and his actions, is the exact opposite: “Shut up and listen to your elders, you stupid rebellious kids. They know better than you.”

Let’s not forget, the Republic is pretty firmly established as oppressive; they’re basically going to let Naboo burn because they’re too bureaucratically constipated. These are people who need rebelling against. And the Jedi Council isn’t much better; Qui-Gon walks in and says “Hey, guys, I found this nine-year-old with power that dwarfs everyone in the room, maybe we should defuse this ticking time bomb?”, and their response is “Naaaaaaah, why would we do that?” They were absolutely right not to train him, but they were also basically dooming everybody in a fifty-mile radius to the ending of “Chronicle” once this kid’s hormones kicked in. This is an organization that needs shaking up.

But Qui-Gon goes about solving these problems in the exact wrong way. Take the Pod Race: he’s making a nine-year-old risk death for auto parts, that he’ll win because he gambled a ship he doesn’t own, and for giggles, he’s also staked that nine-year-old’s hot rod, that he built with his bare hands, oh, and also the kids’ freedom from slavery on his winning a race he’s never even completed.

He’s even a dick in death: “Hey, Obi-Wan, since I’m dying, why don’t you take over training this incredibly dangerous child, a job for which you are blatantly unqualified both according to my bosses and the fact that your hotheadness in this fight gave away a major advantage and got me stabbed. Oh, and let’s make him a Jedi, instead of just making sure he doesn’t become a mass murderer the Jedi Knights have to put down like Cujo with telekinesis the first time he gets a zit.”

It’s pretty much incredibly depressing no matter how you slice it. If it’s intentional, George Lucas basically spent hundreds of millions of dollars to tell you to get off the lawn you weren’t even standing on. If it’s unintentional, that’s kind of worse, because it means he doesn’t realize that’s what he was doing.

In its own way, it’s actually kind of tragic. The prequels were always about money, because George just doesn’t have enough ever apparently, but they were also about control. They were a bid by Lucas to assert that he was still relevant as a filmmaker, still a revolutionary, still the Rebellion and not the Empire. One wonders if Qi-Gon was in fact Lucas inserting himself into the script.

In light of his actions, that’s probably the most depressing idea of all.

Well, it is a bad movie in many respects. But Red Letter Media took care of that pretty thoroughly. This aspect stood out to me because Qui-Gon is such an incredible DICK in this movie, and it made me think about why.

I thought it was funny when Darth Maul got killed at the end. The look on his face said either, “How did this shitty swordsman actually do that?” or it might have said, “Why did Lucas kill me off, because I am clearly the best thing about this movie?”

Ya know, in one respect these films were actually filmed in the right order. Fighting oppression is the message of the young, and it came from a young George Lucas. Listening to your elders is the message of an old man with eleventy-seven children, a house, and an empire of his own (of intellectual property) to protect.

The fact is, it works out chronologically correct: The old do their old people thing and screw up the world, the young come in and correct it.

Just saying that an argument can easily be made that the films were predestined to turn out the way they did because Lucas’ own baggage comes into it. Back then we were the young, hopeful, peers who cheered our hero, Young Lucas Skywalker, but now we’re just “those pesky kids on the internet who don’t know any better”.

since you went to see the film in 3D and handed over more money and time to this disaster says to me that your judgement stinks and your critique is spurious at best.

i remember finding Liam Neeson to be one of the only two interesting characters in the entire film. dick or not. wether that’s Neeson’s acting or the character as written (i lean with Neeson) is irrelevant.

its a shame, though, that the only two interesting characters in the whole prequel trilogy died in the first film… but there you go.

His job is “third-period math.” He’s a teenager. He can’t win on the whole “BAAAW I’m better than you because you saw this” tip, so he’s trying the “BAAAAWWW I’m better than you because you made money for seeing this” tip. It’s cute, really. I remember when I was a teenager and picked fights like this.

The prequels had some nice ideas. Darth Maul, the idea that the Republic had turned into a semi-corrupt bureaucracy was interesting to me too. It dirtied the “good guys” to a certain extent, having the impression that the Republic in the main trilogy was squeaky clean. I love Qui-Gon too (but you are totally right here,) Hayden in episode III was a good Vader in my eyes, it had more to do with Lucas’ shitty writing. I give props to Portman for saying “You’re breaking my heart!” without breaking out into laughter. And obviously Yoda fighting the Emperor was fantastic. But other than those things, yeah I didn’t like the prequels at all really.

But where I think the Jedi counsel dropped the ball was having a rule not allowing Jedi to have relationships. Because ultimately that is what cause Anakin’s fall. He couldn’t approach anyone about his relationship and his frustrations with the council largely stem from them forbidding it.

In my mind the best prequel of all though? Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Damn I wish they had made that into a movie instead. It felt more like a prequel to me than the prequels did.

I think the Jedi were originally conceived as the parallels to the Guardians found in Plato’s “Republic,” a parallel that quickly got lost when Lucas realized how much people running around with their laser swords out all the time is a good selling point for toys to children.

I’m still leaning towards “samurai”. “Star Wars” owes a lot to a Kurosawa film called “The Hidden Fortress”: it’s on Hulu Plus and worth seeing in its own right, but you will get a LOT of deja vu, watching it.

The entire depiction of the Republic is idiotic because it is clearly an artifact of our world transplanted into a sci-fi environment with completely different fundamentals. Hundreds of “Ambassadors” in one big room and they just kinda talk things out? Also, if you have cheap interstellar travel, robots, endless resources, etc. why do you need a centralized government for the entire galaxy? What is there that needs to be discussed and decided on by everyone?

Darth Maul wasn’t a nice idea btw. He was just a throwaway character with no point or purpose other than to provide a reason for a lightsaber fight.

Star Wars is the “Dallas Cowboys” of sci-fi/fantasy franchises. It had its golden age where it found unrivaled success and was almost universally loved, but eventually the hubris of its creator, or “owner”, who thought that his decisions were the main reason that the franchise was so successful, asserted more control over the operations of the franchise and cut out the other contributors to the franchises success, caused the popularity of the franchise to erode, and now makes his decisions based solely on the idea that he has to defend his decisions as successful, all while alienating the source of the success, the fans, in the process.

Heh. So you didn’t see the trailer Chronicle did you? Because I’m fairly certain that was obvious to everyone that Andrew was gonna turn bad. I mean… if Dan wanted to really spoil Chronicle he would have told you that Andrew dies at the end and Matt goes to Tibet. Now THAT would be a spoiler.

I don’t think Qui Gonn is a dick for trying to get Anakin into the Jedi Order. Ya, he was a dick for several reasons, but that isn’t one of them.

What should he have done with Anakin? Just let him go? All that power with no way of controlling it?

It was the Jedi Council who fucked up with Anakin. Taking him in but reminding him at every turn that they didn’t want him. that he was a charity case. They have him trained by a guy who just got graduated himself.

Well, you could say that the whole message was “you kids get off the lawn, and obey your elders,” etc., but look how things turn out. The Jedi Council is destroyed, their subordinates are exterminated, the Republic is subverted and warped… and it seems pretty clear to me that all of that still would’ve happened whether or not Anakin had been there. And of course, by virtue of these films being prequels, you can say that everything Anakin (and Qui-Gon) did in the prequels was justified because it all leads up to him ultimately killing Palpatine and “fulfilling the prophecy,” which wouldn’t have happened had he not disobeyed the council and knocked-up Padme. So, I disagree that “obey your elders” was the moral of this story.

But I do agree with your summation of the pod race thing, how that was just horrible judgment on Qui-Gon’s part, and that he’s pretty much a huge dick for even suggesting that shit. And, while we’re at it, Anakin’s mom is a fucking imbecile too.

Also, I guess I don’t remember it very well — how was Obi-Wan’s hotheadedness responsible for Qui-Gon’s death?

Lucas makes some shitty movies that shit on movies that really weren’t all that great (but were groundbreaking both in the popularity of the genre and in special effects), but were beloved by a generation. Then, years later, he decides to mint himself some more money by re-shitting out those movies.

All of this keeps the internet/fandom engine revving up, creating a self-sustaining rage machine that perpetuates discourse about the merits (or lack thereof) of the movies (and books, etc.).

Can we stop debating what was the shittiest thing about Episode 1 and just say it was shitty, and leave it at that? We’re printing money for Lucas’s neck pouch by even thinking about this shit. There is no popular angst about the crappiness of Star Troopers 2 (Electric Bug-aloo), and so that shit fades into oblivion.

Let’s let Lucas’s colossal lack of talent speak for itself, and everyone who has a beef with how crappy Star Wars has become pony up some dollars into a fund for buying the rights from Lucas so a talented team of writers can create a good script that can then be made into a good movie.

Yes, I’m looking forward to Lucas being in the grave and someone re-booting the franchise. And then we can all look back at this shit being the equivalent of Adam West’s Batman.

I think if you use the Phantom Edit as a starting point (never seen it, I just assume it minimizes Jar Jar, edits out midichlorians, and removes a few “yippees” and “yahoos” from the kid who just wanted a Turbo Man figure) Phantom Menace presented a lot of ideas with potential for growth…

…that Lucas completely dropped the ball on with Ep2 and couldn’t recover.

The problem here, like the problem in your Cracked article, is that you pick things that don’t really prove the flaws of the movie. The first trilogy was airtight. Like one of those commenters said, it was human mistakes, not plotholes. In the end, Evil Twin and JJ Junior Shabz are the voice of reason.

The reason why Episode I sucks is not because Qui-Gon is a dick. He made an error in judgment, he put his faith in the wrong guy. But eventually, he’s right, the emperor gets killed by Vader. Also, he knew all along that he’d win the pod race, that’s the whole point of him being a jedi and sensing the future, he may appear as a prick doing it.

Episode I sucks because Jarjar is a modern version of blackface, because medichlorians are stupid, and mostly because of Anakin being a kid. I too think a lot of it is interesting, Maul, The rotten Republic, the dogmatic Jedi Concil. Vader turns out to be an annoying kid whereas he should have been a normal Jedi turning bad because of the war (that is how I was envisioning it after that scene in A New Hope) not because of him being sad over the departure of his mother. This character is by far the worst thing about the prequels. If Anakin was just an orphan slave, there wouldn’t be those awful dream sequences and that whole saving her shenanigans in Episode 2, that I thought was pretty well directed (in comparison of this one) but ultimately flawed by Christensen wooden acting and useless plot complications. But there is no morale in Phantom Menace, it is just bad critic job on you part. Over-interpretation. The fact that Lucas didn’t direct V and VI doesn’t make them better. It’s basically dumb action movies, people, wake up, it’s not Taxi Driver, you don’t have to be an artist to direct them well. Lucas WAS talented, his three first movies are awesome. He just lost it. That’s all there is to it. The fact that he doesn’t own up to his mistakes, that he continues to alienate his fans just make him a douche, but that doesn’t make him retrospectively a talentless hack.